The Intellectual Virtue of Absolute Freedom
(Extract in Blog | Full text hereunder (Free))
In philosophy, absolute freedom means the independence of all restraints, moralist as well as legal. It is usually marked as a negative freedom for reasons I am not going to dive into as we are not here to hold a Lycian debate on the philosophical stance; at least not purely, traditional-ly. (Other than that, we can note that negative freedom usually means the absence of a state to restrain one’s freedom of movement, speech or any other register) My interest is more obtuse, more politically coloured. I want to discuss the intellectual virtue of absolute freedom, although the word “absolute” is misleading, as it implies an egoist fashion pioneered by the likes of Ayn Rand and Max Stirner, the latter in particular. (Without turning into the true pioneers of ancient Greece, captivated by Plato in his dialogues, preserved in writings such as the «Politéia». As interesting as they may be, I haven’t read them and am uncertain about their value for the times we inhabit, with many more, much more current writers as those I mentioned heretofore and will add up in the later passages of this text)